Eric Junker Leads Design Workshop and Creates Mural in Shanghai

This past July, Eric Junker, assistant professor at the USC Roski School of Art and Design, traveled to Shanghai to teach a five-day intensive workshop at the Shanghai Institute of Visual Art and paint a large-scale mural in the lobby of SIVA’s iconic Eye Building, home to the university’s library and performing arts theater in the Songjiang District.

The workshop, titled Public Work / Personal Ground: Designing from the Inside Out, challenged 20 second- and third-year visual design students to develop a personal visual language rooted in direct observation. Working from objects brought from home and natural elements found on SIVA’s campus, students moved through iteration exercises, critique sessions and large-format print production, culminating in a collective exhibition of their completed designs on the final morning. Despite a language barrier, the week generated genuinely surprising work.

The mural, painted with the help of student volunteers during the evenings after class, feels like a natural conversation between Junker’s California street art sensibility and the visual traditions of his host country. Rendered in deep red and blue on white, the composition echoes the bold, flat forms and floral symbolism of jiǎnzhǐ, the centuries-old Chinese folk art of paper cutting. A central figure in an LA cap moves through a field of lotuses, five-petaled flowers and paisley forms in pursuit of a trio of birds carrying a red silk. The imagery has deep resonance: Flowers signal renewal, birds represent good fortune and repeated motifs reflect numerological thinking shared across Chinese and Western visual traditions.